Many of the Chinese laborers who had laid the roads now harvested the crops. The railroad barons and other industrials acquired vast tracts of land with the idea of growing large quantities of food to ship back east on their railroads, which in turn would bring other goods to the growing West Coast population. The bulk of UFW ’s activities have been conducted in California, where corporate farming in the United States took root around the same time that the railroad connected the fertile farmlands of the state to the eastern markets in the 1860s. 19TH-CENTURY BACKGROUND: CORPORATE FARMING AND NEED FOR FARMWORKERS In addition to its national headquarters in Keene, California, UFW maintains several other offices in California as well as in Florida and Washington state. The organization has an estimated 50,000 members. Other achievements include the first contracts to provide rest periods, drinking water, toilets, and hard washing facilities in the fields, the banning of pesticide spraying while workers were in the field, and protective clothing to guard against exposure to pesticides guaranteed senior and job security contracts that included profit sharing and parental leave the first comprehensive union health benefits for farmworkers and their families the first pension plan for retired farmworkers and a farmworker credit union. The UFW is best known for its successful boycott of California grapes that led to unprecedented gains for farmworkers. Under new leadership the UFW has since taken steps to rebuild and find its place in a world far different than when the organization burst onto the scene in the 1960s as La Causa and attracted a host of celebrity supporters.
Founded by charismatic leader, Cesar Chavez, UFW reached the peak of its influence in the 1970s, then declined until his death in 1993.
United Farm Workers of America (UFW) is a union for agricultural laborers, primarily in California. NAIC: 813930 Labor Unions and Similar Labor Organizations Founded: 1962 as National Farm Workers Association
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